Coming and going, leaving and arriving, exit and entrance. That’s the theme lying underneath our passages for today. That’s the theme permeating the verses we heard from Matthew and Exodus. Departures and arrivals—the movement of people. Follow the commandments, Jesus says in Matthew 5, so you can enter the kingdom of heaven—it’s all about a… More
Sermons
Worship is more than preaching. Each worship gathering draws from the wealth of gifts of the community. We have rotations of volunteers who share the responsibilities of preaching, song leading, and service planning. We take turns reading the assigned Scripture readings for the day. The high point of our worship is our time for response and sharing. Since we believe that anyone can offer an interpretation of the Bible, we provide time in our worship for people to offer their own reflections on the Scriptures and the sermon.
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I remember you
After teaching classes in prison for a while—classes about faith, about the bible, about theology—I asked the people who enrolled in my class what they wanted to learn about. Writing, they said. They wanted to figure out how to write better, because that’s what they did with their time, in those night hours, their sleepless… More
Disturbing the city
The young woman in the story we heard is a slave. Her life is a possession of a wealthy Roman family. Her body is owned by business partners. They have economic rights to her. They exercise dominion over her. They control her. She is nameless because she doesn’t need one. She is an object, a… More
Miracles
I’m guessing you’ve already heard this news—what happened this week, over the past several days. Twenty-five people were captured by ICE in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Durham—kidnapped by president Trump’s Gestapo-like federal agents who raid peoples neighborhoods, officers who invade homes, who come with guns and handcuffs, arresting our neighbors, without warning, without permission of… More
My
After the crucifixion, the disciples had heard the news from Mary Magdalene—that Jesus was alive. That was last week. In our passage for today, a week has passed, a week after Easter morning. A week since Mary saw Jesus outside the tomb. A week since she rushed back to the others to share the good… More
Let my people go, Set my people free
Early on Easter morning, before dawn, Mary Magdalene visits the tomb. She had seen Jesus crucified the day before. She was at the cross—there for his last breath, there when they pierced his side, there when they took him down, there when they carried his corpse away for burial. Mary has lived for far too… More
Original sin, original love
In the 1950s, a guy named Bill Bright came up with a roadmap for evangelism called, “The Four Spiritual Laws.” This statement of faith became a foundational document for North American evangelicalism. There are a lot of problems with it—and there are a lot of problems with Bill Bright, like that he was one of… More
Denying Jesus
There’s an old story—it’s probably a legend—about an evangelist who travels to Indiana, to farm country, to share the gospel, to convert people to Christianity. He meets a Mennonite at the general store. The evangelist says, “Sir, are you a Christian?” And the Mennonite responds, “I’m not the best person to answer that question. You… More
Spit and mud
“Everything happens for a reason.” That is the title of a book by Kate Bowler, a professor of history at Duke Divinity. Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) came out this week and I, like many others, heard her interviewed on NPR. I know that Kate happens to be a friend… More
Misunderstanding Jesus
This is a risky conversation, here at Jacob’s well in the land of Samaria: Jesus, a Jew, and this woman, a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans are kindred peoples, distant relatives, both tracing their lineage to Jacob, the patriarch of Israel. Samaritans and Jews are cousins, but they are not friends. There is tension between the… More
Fierce love
Jesus is a Jew, part of God’s people. And as a faithful Jew, he takes a trip to the temple in Jerusalem for Passover, the festival that remembers Israel slavery in Egypt, and God’s salvation, God’s liberation, freedom from the shackles of bondage, their forced labor, their economic exploitation. When he arrives in Jerusalem, walking… More
Unseen revelations
Last week we read the opening scene in John’s Gospel. A man named Philip found his friend, Nathanael, and told him about a rabbi, a new one who was passing through town, an itinerant rabbi. This was not unusual in first century Judaism—rabbis would emerge, their ministry gaining a following, then perhaps fizzle out. If… More
Consent
In the beginning the earth was without form. In the beginning the darkness roamed and did not hide. The darkness covered. The darkness ruled. In the beginning, there was no light. In the beginning hope was formed with a breath that declared, “Let there be.” And in response to her own voice the earth shifted and moved, and God said “Yes, this is good.” More
Hope made flesh
This is the third week where the prophets have taken us to Israel in exile, the Jews in Babylon, God’s people surviving in the midst of their oppressors—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and now Daniel. In these Scriptures, the prophets offer words of survival, guidance on how to go on, now that they are forced to live as… More
Gardens
The Jeremiah writes a letter, a prophesy, to his people in exile, deported to Babylon, living among their enemies—a letter as guidance on how to survive. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles… ‘Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce’ ” (Jeremiah… More
Unto Us: A Child
This week I listened to the radio while driving around on the highway, as I often do these days, sipping my coffee and seeing how long I can tolerate to drone of the regurgitated news cycle before I have to resort to more interesting podcasts, or give up all together for another episode of Two… More
The Lord roars
For the past several weeks, the passages have focused us on specific people, characters in the story of the Bible, individuals in leadership roles in Israel—people like Samuel and David and Elijah, and we heard their stories as ways to think about our own lives. There’s a shift that happens today. For the next month… More
I alone am left
I can’t read this story and not be transported back three years ago to August 8, 2014. It had been three weeks since Kaitlin and I had moved to Erbil, Iraq, to serve with Mennonite Central Committee. We were living with the couple whose place we were going to take—Jim and Deb. Jim and Deb… More
Voices
We’re great at eavesdropping, at reading other people’s mail. That’s what we do when we read the Bible, our holy scriptures, all the writings complied in this book, letters and stories written to other people, ancient peoples in faraway lands. But in these words, in these stories, we’ve come to hear echoes of God’s voice—God… More
Deny yourself
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24). Self-denial. That’s what we do, as Christians. That’s who we are. We deny ourselves the things of this world—and we call it discipleship, discipline. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it costly… More
Keys, keys, keys
“I got them keys, keys, keys / I got them keys, keys, keys / I got them keys, keys, keys.” That’s DJ Khaled. He’s a rapper, kinda. And when I hear Jesus in our passage tell us that he will give us the keys to the kingdom, I hear DJ Khaled’s beat, his keys, keys,… More
O my people
“O my people.” The words from our hymn have been circling in my head ever since Eric sent me the list of songs Friday afternoon, at 2pm, in an email I read on my phone in front of the old courthouse in Durham, near the empty pedestal where a metal figure of a confederate soldier… More
Peter walks on water
By now most all of you have heard about, read about, seen footage of the white supremacist rallies that took place in Charlottesville yesterday. You have taken in the images of the predictable violence that erupted, the confused tangle of words and outrage and lack of outrage and looking the other way that largely marks… More
I did not know it
Jacob is on the run, crossing border after border, fleeing from his brother who has threatened to kill him. The sun has set. His feet ache. He has to rest. So he finds a rock for a pillow and falls asleep. And he dreams. There’s a ladder reaching from ground beside him into heaven, and… More